Bill Horner is a third-generation newspaper publisher who got his first newspaper byline at age 12 and first magazine byline at 16. He spent 31 years at The Sanford Herald (1985-2016), which was awarded five “General Excellence” awards (four first place and one third place – our “best newspaper in the state” award) by the N.C. Press Association in his last six years there, and for five years (2018-2023) he was publisher and editor of the Chatham News + Record, which won more news reporting awards (in the N.C. Press Association’s annual editorial contest) than any weekly newspaper in the state during that stretch.  He is mostly retired now but writes a column about rural N.C. for Business North Carolina magazine and contributes to a few other N.C.-based magazines.